Ginni when she took over, sorry, she was running strategy before she became CEO, I mean, IBM had a choice, they could go double down on infrastructure and go knock it out with Dell and EMC and HP, or they could go up the value chain. And my ongoing joke is Dell bought EMC, IBM buys some other company, and that to me underscores the differentiation in thinking. Oracle, I think, is a little different, but Oracle and IBM are somewhat similar, I think you’d agree, in that they’ve got a big SaaS portfolio, they’re trying to vertically integrate, they’re trying to drive high-value margin businesses. The difference is IBM’s much more services oriented than, say, an Oracle, and that’s still, as I say, a big challenge for IBM. But I’m more, I’m a bull on IBM.

From John:

IBM’s model of open source is very clear. If you look at what they’ve done with just Blockchain as a great example, they have mobilized their company, and they did it with Bluemix as well with the cloud, once they said, “We want to get in the cloud game,” once, “We want to do Blockchain,” they go open source at the core, then they get their entire brain trust workin’ on it. It’s not just a hand wave, some division, they’re kind of reorganizing on the fly, they’re kind of agile organization, which some may read as chaotic, but to me, I think that’s just good management practice in this day and age. They get an open source project, and they drive that home, and they have people contributing and giving that to the community, and then adding value on top and differentiating. It’s just classic 101, create some value, and create some differentiation with your products, and by the way, if you don’t want to use our products, build your own, or hey, use the open source code. That’s pretty much an over-simplified version of open source.

11 years ago I signed up for this blog. Saw the notification and reminded me that I miss doing my podcast when I founded Podtech.net years ago. So I’m bringing my Silicon Valley podcast back in celebration of WordPress.

When Amazon.com launched its first Web service 10 years ago today, offering storage in the cloud, people thought it was yet another crazy, profit-nuking idea from Chief Executive Jeff Bezos.

Why on Earth, investors and analysts griped, was a company still struggling with a marginally profitable retail business embarking on what looked like an entirely unrelated business: selling the storage and computing services it used in its own operations to other companies? In “Jeff Bezos’ Risky Bet,” an October 2006 BusinessWeek cover story that was the first major media account of Bezos’ thinking behind Amazon Web Services, one Wall Street analyst groused that new investments such as AWS were “probably more of a distraction than anything else.” Even Tim O’Reilly, the CEO of tech book publisher O’Reilly Media who recognized Bezos’ strategy early on, called Amazon a “dark horse” against the likes of Microsoft and Google.

From dark horse to Triple Crown winner

A decade later, that dark horse is nothing less than a Triple Crown winner. There’s scarcely a startup that hasn’t run on AWS, and it’s critical to the digital operations of every company from General Electric Co. to Netflix Inc., which runs all its massive streaming video on Amazon. The unlikely offspring of a retail company, AWS has managed to outmaneuver computing and Internet giants from Microsoft and Google to IBM and Oracle.

Now, the onetime distraction is Amazon’s key distinction in a consolidating group of technology giants. AWS grossed $7.9 billion in revenues last year, up 70 percent from 2014, a growth rate four times as fast as the retail operations. AWS could start to become even more of a revenue driver, too. Morgan Stanley estimates that revenues will grow to $12 billion this year and $16 billion in 2017.

What’s more, AWS has arguably become Amazon’s new profit engine. Although the unit constitutes only 7 percent of Amazon’s overall revenues, its $1.9 billion in operating profit isn’t far off the $2.8 billion operating profit of the entire $99 billion retail business. No wonder that Ben Schachter, an analyst at Macquarie Securities, last year valued AWS at $75 billion, almost half as much as the rest of Amazon’s business.

I’ve been thinking for sometime now about starting a new blog that is different than the current blogs out there today – one that adds something new, different, and interesting to the conversation.

I’m launching this new blog siliconANGLE in the effort to create a different approach to blogging and collaboration. siliconANGLE.com is a blog that promotes quality content and quality people – “the Angle” on new and interesting things about the social web and new technology.

Silicon Angle hopes to leverage all the benefits of the ‘real time’ web and the growing user base of quality professionals out there who are blogging and twittering. This blog is my hobby. It’s not funded by venture capitalists or anyone else, so it probably won’t be as big and professional like CNET, GigaOm, Mashable, or Techcrunch.

My expectations are low, and I don’t look at this as competition with the big sites, but instead adding to them – I’ll link to them often. I really want to know what I can add to this new blog and what features people would enjoy, need, or desire to see here. All input is welcome, but most likely I can’t implement all of them by myself.

The goal is to create quality content, promote ideas, and create opportunities for people and companies. We place the highest value on people that promote and create innovation, jobs, wealth, peace, and better global citizenship as well as to work for the intellectual and social achievement of society.

I’m looking forward to improving the site (yes it needs work if you have ideas then join and help make the site better), collaborating with new friend, working with other entrepreneurs, and developing “The Angle” on new ideas and opportunities.

My personal blog Furrier.org has been gaining traffic over the past year where I have been posting only my opinion. I’ve been approached by many of my friends who want to post on my blog and have quality conversations with me, but they don’t want to start a blog and deal with the hassles of blogging (believe me there are tons of hassles in blogging). Fact is, most quality people think blogging is boring – unless it’s part of a group of peers. I’m now going to take the approach of peer blogging and make that the core mission of the siliconANGLE project (this blog). It will start with my friends and colleagues then include their friends and colleagues and so on. It is for people who have something interesting and deep to say – content that complements the current blogosphere and twittersphere.

The purpose is to develop The Angle with interesting and important people, ideas, and conversations.

Why create siliconANGLE? Do we need another blog?

Why create a blog when blogging seems to be so “yesterday”? Well blogging compliments the real time web in a big way. For me it’s about innovation and invention. This blog will be focused on the positive trends in entrepreneurship and new invention around the social web and technology.

Over the past year I’ve guided a few other entrepreneurs and business executives to succeed based upon my knowledge and experience. I’m looking to continue that and see if we can create a new approach to sharing experiences and knowledge to help others. My goal is to create a global collaborative hub.

This is a self-funded project, and my expectation is to take it slow at first. So I’m looking for advice, guidance, and support. Comment, email me, or join.

Silicon Angle Imperative – A Mandate To Create Positive Change

The mandate of siliconANGLE is to promote entrepreneurship, discovery, and invention to create sparks of innovation which will spawn new venture creation. The siliconANGLE group is dedicated to recognizing those ‘rock stars’ that have something interesting to say or contribute. We place the highest value on people that promote and create innovation, jobs, wealth, peace, and better global citizenship as well as to work for the intellectual and social achievement of society.

Old School Philosophy – Power of Quality

Back in the early days of blogging I realized that there is a powerful impact of publishing quality voices, ideas, opinion, and analysis of people creating new products, companies, and markets. What I’ve found is that the power of publishing about quality ideas and quality people not only creates a good user experience, but also creates relationships that can create positive change – one that causes people to connect and collaborate.

As an entrepreneur I see the value in a blog that creates a collaborative peer-group atmosphere that takes the ‘real time’ news and information and turns it into quality content with ideas, commentary, analysis, and opinion – a conversation. A conversation among peers and colleagues.

Positioning of siliconANGLE – Social Science Meets Computer Science

siliconANGLE is a place where computer science meets social science. This blog will be a open place for quality people to post content about the changes going on around the world in context to social and technology change. siliconANGLE is a place for people who want to blog without all the hassles of being a full time blogger. It’s a collaborative hub of peers and colleagues. Everyone is welcome to join, comment, and share links, but only individuals that have been vetted and approved can post.

We’ll be doing podcasts as well as blogging and twittering in topics such as news, trends, social media, infrastructure 2.0, politics, research and development, companies that are innovating, venture capital, startups, and places of innovation like Silicon Valley and international equivalents. We will have a strong editorial policy to provide the best content from the most qualified people and this will include people from companies. There is no church and state business model here. The group will allow content from corporations on any topic as long as it’s relevant. The overall mission is to promote quality and discourage useless information. The goal is to provide signal not noise.

Example quote from a smart blogger… “400 dedicated readers in a well-defined niche space, such as photography, beat the hell outta 40,000 drive-by users in an amorphous mob. Advertisers will want to reach those 400 people, because they know them, know what their interests are, and know that the ads served to them are going to the right people.”

There is still a demand for typewriter repairs, from those, young and old, who love the sound and feel of the machines to a number of businesses who keep them in regular use. Typewriter repairman Tom Furrier admits that he’s a dinosaur. He’s one of the few typewriter repairman in the Boston area who fixes typewriters only, and not those newfangled computers, faxes, and printers as well.

When Furrier first started fixing typewriters almost 30 years ago, no office was complete without the sound of clicking typewriters. The typewriter repairman was a common sight, making service calls to offices to fix gummy keys, broken springs, cracked rubber rollers, and busted return mechanisms.

Today? Furrier once went to a law office to fix a typewriter but the twentysomething receptionist didn’t know what a typewriter was. “She kept pointing to different boxes, saying, ‘Is that a typewriter?’ or ‘Is that one there?’ I told her ‘You’re standing right next to it.’ ”

But Furrier, who is also a typewriter collector and salesman, stays in business because typewriters are still used for forms, envelopes, and labels in law offices, town halls, hospitals, and funeral homes. “There are certain forms that still have to be typewritten and that are not computer-friendly, such as death and birth certificates,” says Furrier. “Every maternity ward has a typewriter, as well as funeral homes, which might seem strange in this day and age, but is good for me, of course.”

Furrier also fixes the typewriters of many writers who still tap out their drafts because they like the sound and the tactile experience.

“A lot of writers tell me that the sensory feedback from typing is different from the computer, and that typing slows down the thought process,” says Furrier, who also counts a local psychiatrist, physicians, and artists among his clientele. “Some doctors even recommend typewriters to their stroke victims, to help them build hand strength and eye coordination.”

It takes 30 minutes to an hour to fix most typewriters, and Furrier says a typewriter repairman can earn $40,000 to $50,000 a year. Furrier, who has a degree in forestry, says he wanted to work with his hands and finds great satisfaction from fixing a broken typewriter.

“I decided a long time ago that I was only going to fix typewriters – it’s typewriters or nothing,” says Furrier. “I like working with this old technology of motors, belts, pulleys, and levels.”

How does it feel to be a typewriter repairman in the age of computers? I get calls from all over the country, from people who want their typewriters fixed. Someone called me from Atlanta, which is a huge city with four million people, but not one typewriter repair shop. Another person was in Paris for the summer, and his Selectric broke, and he couldn’t find anyone in Paris to fix his typewriter, so he had to drive an hour and half outside the city to get it fixed. So we are a dying breed.

Up until the 1980s or so, there were millions of typewriters in offices all over the country. What happened to them all? Most are in landfills. Many offices just threw them in the Dumpsters. Some people did bring the machines home with them; a few workers told me that when they retired they were able to bring their typewriter home with them.

You have a lot of different typewriters in your shop, from portable electric Smith Coronas to IBM Selectrics. What’s your favorite typewriter? I like the older vintage manual typewriters, such as Royal, Olympia, Olivetti, Underwood, and Remington, and in particular, the really shiny, black lacquered machines from the 1930s. They have glass-topped keys with metal rings around them, which people love, because your fingers fit into them beautifully. They sell from $100 to $400.

Where do you get the typewriters that you sell at Cambridge Typewriters? The really nice, pristine stuff comes from collectors who pick up the machines at conventions. I also get typewriters from eBay and from people who are cleaning out their attic or homeowners who are downsizing.

And where do your typewriter parts come from? I have a graveyard in my basement, where I store tons and tons of old machines from every manufacturer. And there are supply houses that still make parts for newer machines, including ribbons.

What’s the oddest request you’ve ever gotten? One man used to come in every week and order a typewriter that could communicate with the dead. We’d tell him, “Yes, we ordered that, it’s on back order.”

I’ve seen earrings and necklaces that use typewriter keys for ornamentation. Do you sell typewriter parts to these jewelry artists? No. I don’t like to see nice machines cannibalized for jewelry. It bugs me.

People say they love the sound of a typewriter bell. Yes, the typewriter bell is a neat sound, and every brand has a different sound. When I do a repair, I always make sure the bell has a nice sustain to it. When the bell rings, it should fade out slowly. The Smith Corona has a loud distinctive bell, and the Royal has a nice pitch to it. But I don’t like the ring on a Remington machine.

Do you meet lots of people who don’t even know what a typewriter is? Surprisingly, typewriters are really popular now among teens and preteens who want to try typing on a typewriter. It’s a cool fad and they want to get that typewriter vibe.

Will typewriters ever make a comeback? No, I don’t think so, but I think there will always be a curiosity about typewriters. Typewriters will never go away completely – they’ll be around for a long, long time to come